1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to aircraft, watercraft, and landcraft, but especially aeronautical safety lowering devices, such as parachutes and balloons, and to escape devices, such as fire escapes.
2. Background of the Invention
For at least eighty years it has been a desired objective to provide apparatuses for cargo, often in the form of a human being, to survive descents, especially free fall through the air, from heights, especially great heights. By far the most predominant apparatus for this purpose is the parachute, which has been brought to a state of high refinement, with many specific designs, features, and variations known to those of skill in the art.
However, problems remain in the use of the parachute, as it is subject to: failure of opening; entanglement with itself and/or the cargo; collapse due to swaying of the cargo or impact with an object; requiring a relatively high degree of skill to pack, deploy, and land; relatively high wind drift producing lack of precision and lack of accuracy in landing at a desired landing site; inability to drop during extreme weather conditions; inability to be predeployed before low altitude drops of, for example, 100 vertical feet; inability to protect the cargo from fire, for example, when dropping from a burning building several stories in height; inability to safely land in rugged terrains, such as dense forest, steep canyon and mountain surfaces, raging seas and rivers, or even in a city having a concentrated cluster of high rise buildings; allowing an enemy to visually detect the type and amount of cargo being dropped to a location; subjecting the cargo to the potentially extreme effects of weather and atmospheric friction during and after descent; and a relatively slow descent rate necessitated by the relatively intense impact of the cargo with the ground, upon termination of descent; and, enabling an enemy to have a sustained opportunity to damage or harm the cargo, especially human cargo.
Primary and supplemental (interior and exterior) stairways have long been used as fire escapes. However, they are often useless during fires because they subject victims to intolerable levels of smoke, heat, and/or flames. Furthermore, ladders and chutes used as fire escapes frequently cannot be extended far enough to permit escape from high rise buildings of many stories, and also subject victims to smoke, heat, and flames. Individuals jumping from buildings to safety below reach injurious velocities before striking the ground. Often, firefighters cannot get close enough to the building to provide an inflated pad, and even if such is provided, jumpers are not always fortunate enough to land on the pad, or strike the pad at an extreme speed or awkward position, resulting in injury, often fatal injury.
Recreational use of descent devices such as hang gliders and bungee cords have become popular in recent decades. Other descent devices, such as parachutes, roller coasters, downhill skis, ski-jumping skis, and toboggans, have been popular for many decades. However, unrestrained, free-fall descent by relatively heavy, fragile cargo, including human beings, remains highly destructive and/or extremely risky, especially in some potentially exciting environments, such as within severe weather systems such as thunderstorms and tornadoes, down slopes of mountains, canyons, and over and through large waves, especially large breaking waves.
Occupants of ships must occasionally abandon sinking and/or burning ships during storms, fires, explosions, etc. Frequently cold and/or rough seas, and cold and/or windy weather, produces conditions unfit for human survival for even several hours, even if a life vest and/or life raft are available. It is not unusual for many abandoning ship to drown from such conditions, as rescue can require hours or even days. Currently there is no means to virtually encapsulate those abandoning ship in a rugged, light craft, virtually immune to the destructive effects of rough seas, while keeping fragile cargo, especially human cargo, from severe exposure to the effects of water, wind, and cold temperatures common in storms at sea, while rescuers search for survivors and other valuable cargo. Furthermore, there are currently few watercraft suited to carrying fragile, relatively heavy cargo down raging rivers, through breaking waves, and over waterfalls, without severe risk to the cargo, especially human cargo.
Moreover, currently there is no single craft designed to simultaneously serve the combination of roles of descent aircraft, descent landcraft (for sloped surfaces such as mountains and canyon walls), as well as watercraft, while providing any reasonable hope of protection of fragile, relatively heavy cargo, including human beings. Prior art craft suitable to free-fall descent through the air, such as parachutes, are unsuited to ensuring preservation of the cargo upon impact of the cargo and/or chute impact with a steep canyon wall, and/or a water landing, not to mention the combination of free-fall through the air followed by impact with, for example, a canyon wall, followed by landing in a raging river, in a single, continuous descent.
Furthermore, space vehicles orbiting the earth frequently drop back into the atmosphere and are destroyed by the heat of reentry. Reusable vehicles, such as the space shuttle, utilize insulating tiles capable of withstanding extremely high temperature in order to survive the heat produced upon reentry. This extreme and destructive heat generated on reentry of spacecraft is caused by the very high speed associated with reentry, and the friction of the craft passing through the atmosphere at such high speed. If the speed of reentry could be reduced significantly, and/or if the friction can be dissipated over a substantially larger surface, the temperature generated could be reduced to tolerable levels, and the returning spacecraft or satellite could be recycled, especially if the means for speed reduction and heat dissipation also serves to protect the vehicle upon impact. Moreover, the means to protect the vehicle could also protect the site upon which the vehicle lands, reducing damage to the natural environment, man-made objects, and even human beings.
A device is known in which a human being is partially within an inflated balloon, while in descent through the air. The balloon lacks any internal structure. Another device in known in which a human being, dangling from a parachute while descending through the air, also wears an inflated suit having multiple compartments. The inflated suit has the general overall shape of the occupant, i.e., has arms, legs, heat, and body portions, and has a thickness of less than half of the width of the occupant across the front of the chest.
Recently the automotive industry has incorporated airbags into the steering wheel and dash panels of motor vehicles. These airbags have proven to protect those body portions of occupants colliding therewith, even upon deceleration from, for example, 60 miles per hour to 0 miles per hour, in a distance of less than 2 feet. The lack of damage to the occupant is a testament to the human body's ability to survive extreme decelerations if spread over a substantial surface and if extended over time.